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Kaoru... why did we have to be so stupid that day? It's like we haven't grown at all. We're so out of touch with reality, that even though we're fifteen, it's like we're like children... that our minds are that of five year olds... or seven, at best.
When we were five, we liked to go night exploring. We did that in our mansion until we realized that we had explored all of it. When we grew up, that habit never changed. Exploring and finding new places was fun, but we didn't explore old places unless they were extremely interesting.
Today, we are visiting family with our parents. Finally, we managed to escape to explore with each other, going where we've never been. Our uncle's mansion is enormous. It's five stories high, and we've already explored just about every floor of it, going up a floor once one floor has been thoroughly looked through. We're bored. There's nothing cool here...
"Let's check out the roof, next. I bet it has an awesome view." Kaoru suggested. I agreed, and walked with him up a winding staircase to the top. We're both sweating from the trip. If there isn't something special up here, we're both going to be highly ticked since that was a wasted effort.
This is better. Kaoru's right... the view is amazing. The sun is setting. It's really beautiful. There's a large amount of space to cover up here.
"It'd be really cool to find a secret room up here." I say, smirking. I figure the secret room could have lots of perverted stuff in it. How nice would it be to have someone to blackmail? It's been far too long since we've ruined some jerk's life...
"I agree." He replies, his face mirroring my expression. He probably has the same ideas in mind.
We once found a perverted room at our mansion when we were eleven. It had sex toys everywhere, whips, chains... the works. Kaoru admitted that he wouldn't mind owning a room similar to that one. I agreed, but he was more enthusiastic. The only thing that I could say to him to keep him from touching anything was that it was probably the property of our parents, and that put him off of the idea immediately. Yeah. We don't want to touch germy parent objects...
We discovered that this goes even higher than we thought, and again, we're climbing stairs. I hold back a groan. Stairs have been around forever... I'd love to go back and kill the person who invented them. I could tell them why escalators and elevators are a thousand times better... but I have no idea how to make them. Maybe I should just ignore the cramping in my legs and keep my eyes on Kaoru. He seems fine. I'm jealous.
Thinking of that perverted room our parents own, I see some blush on his face. I wonder if he's feeling overworked from the stairs, or has the same thoughts in mind. I'm sure he still wants a room like that. He might even want more hardcore stuff than what we saw. He was very interesting in the things that go inside of girls. I've never told him that I think he prefers guys. I'm letting him figure it out on his own. Actually, I'd rather that neither of us ever married or got a relationship. It would only lead to heartbreak and sorrow. Marriages never last, affairs happen, and really, nobody cares about each other. We care about each other, though. We can protect each other forever. I never want that to change.
We reach the top. There isn't much up here, but we can see our uncle's entire estate. The land around is like that of a dream... it's like a world so beautiful, unrealistic, and perfect that I could picture us here forever if only it weren't for the fact that this place doesn't belong to us. A soft wind gently blows against us. I can smell flowers. Kaoru probably can, too. The orange and pink sky really sets the perfect mood. It's the perfect tranquil fantasy.
I see him climbing over the railing so that he can stand on the ledge. He looks peaceful, and it looks cool and all, but this isn't okay.
"Kaoru! That's dangerous! Please don't stand in such a dangerous place!" he ignores what I said and says,
"Isn't it beautiful here? It's the perfect place... the perfect time, for me..." his honey-colored eyes are closed and he leans back against the rail that he's holding onto.
"Kaoru, please come back here where it's safe-"
"Hikaru," the way he said it caught me off guard. He was now turned towards me, leaning on it.
"Kaoru..." I walk closer to him, slowly so that the situation doesn't become more dangerous for him. I couldn't stand the idea of him falling more than five stories... he may not live. He glances over his shoulder at something far below us. I think he's looking at a stream, or possibly the two trees nearby the mansion. He then looks back at me.
"I wanna tell you something." He said as I reach him. It felt like it had taken forever just to walk a foot.
"Yeah?"
"It's the perfect time for me." He says quietly. I strained to hear him, and wondered what it meant. I leaned in closely to hear him talk, wondering why he looked down when he said it. When he leaned up, he pressed his lips to mine, catching me off guard completely. Me? Kissing me? Is this what he meant? He broke it off. He eyes looked so sad... as though he were going to cry. His lips were curved into a sad smile. "I love you." He whispered before turning quickly, launching himself from the building, intending to fall all six stories to the hard ground below. I screamed his name. He landed. He wasn't moving.
These stairs don't matter to me at all. I run down them, the adrenaline giving me strength. My brother... my baby brother... my twin that I could never live without... why? Kaoru, WHY?! Tears streak down my face as I reach a tree nearby the mansion, leap onto it, and climb down until I can jump down to him from a safe distance. I realize why he had been looking in the direction of these trees and the stream: it's where he'd aim for when he jumped.
He's bleeding, and he's obviously broken bones. I don't know if he's breathing. I take out my cell phone, shaking and breathing hard. I can't control myself... what will I do without him? I call our mother and tell her that he fell from the top floor before I could save him. I just don't have the heart to tell her that he had tried to commit suicide.
'She'll call an ambulance.' I thought, praying that they could make it here before it was too late. I hold him close to me, crying my heart out. Kaoru... why?
-----
In the hospital, when he finally awoke, he found me next to him, holding his hand. I couldn't cry anymore. My mind had gone blank a long time ago. Just knowing that he had survived that somehow brought me peace of mind. I heard him swallow thickly and look away from me, his hair rustling against the pillow his injured head rested on. I looked up quickly, realizing he had awakened.
"Kaoru..." I whispered. I felt the tears start to come back. To see him moving again, even if it wasn't much, filled me with hope. He wouldn't look at me. "Kaoru!" I embrace him, crying on his chest, being careful not to further injure him. His left arm isn't broken, and I feel his left hand on the back of my head, gently stroking my hair. I look up at him a little bit. "Please..." I say through my tears, trying to make it come out smoothly despite my sobbing. "Tell me why... why did you do that?"
"Hikaru..." he whispers my name, adverting my eyes. "I don't want to talk about it..."
"You never seemed suicidal... you never seemed unhappy... why would you do that? Why would you abandon me like that?" do I look as lonely as I feel? I can't control my tears at all. He's the only one I've ever cried in front of like this. I've never felt so hurt in my entire life.
"Being sad has nothing to do with it." He whispered. The way he moved his head to look away made his hair fall over his eyes. "I wasn't supposed to survive that fall. It was the perfect time for me..." his voice cracked and I knew he'd start crying in a moment, too. It only hurt my heart even more.
"Perfect... time... for you?" I... understand what he meant, now. He was referring to the day he would die. I can't contain my anger. I feel betrayed. "You're too young to up and die! What about... what about me? What about us?!" I yell. "When did you decide that you were going to die?! When did you make that horrible decision?! Why did you DO that?!"
"I... don't want..." he whispered. I cut him off, continuing to yell at him. I'm not in my right mind, but neither of us are.
"To talk about it? Well, you're too late for that one, Kaoru. There's no way in hell that you can get out of telling me why you did that. You're the one I care most about. You're the ONE person I see in my world!" I have his attention. I hold his gaze. "It's our world. We. Us. There isn't anyone other than you and me. The world is destroyed without one of us here. Please..." more tears start to fall. "Please... don't leave me..." My hair falls over my eyes before I cry against his chest again. I don't have the energy to talk anymore. All the questions still hang in the air, and all remained unanswered. At some point--and I'm not sure how this happened--I cried myself to sleep in his arms. I don't know what's going on in his mind.
-----
Finally, after we were sure that our arrangements at home could accommodate Kaoru's two broken legs and right arm, he was discharged from the hospital, and we went home. The maids will take care of him. He's going to have a hard time for months. The maids help him inside and get his legs propped up comfortably. Well, as comfortably one with broken and cracked bones can be. He can't go to school because he can't write with his left hand. I hope he doesn't fail...
Only stupid, selfish people try to kill themselves. I don't care that i don't 'get' it. I don't care how selfish I sound. My own self preservation is all that matters. What is the point without Kaoru? If he tells me someone else was the reason he did that, someone's going to die. I have enough money to cover it up. If I have to, I can just get the shadow king involved, and sell my soul to cover it up. I don't care. I don't care.
I lay down next to him. He still won't speak to me after these few miserable days. What made it worse was that our parents kept interrogating me as if they knew something I didn't... as if they thought it had been planned and that Kaoru ha jumped rather than fallen. I lied every time, saying that he fell. If they think this was on purpose, he'll be in a mental hospital. Sure, rich people mental hospitals are better than commoners', but I can't bare the thought of Kaoru being away from me for so long. I want to keep him where I can see him at all times to make sure he doesn't do anything else. I keep expecting to blink, and he disappears in front of my very eyes.
Maybe I need a mental hospital myself, but I won't tell anyone. That doesn't server my best interests.
Finally, Kaoru spoke.
"I just can't bear it." He whispered. I come out of the trance I had gone into, and give him my full attention. His eyes are fixed on the white ceiling. "After all these years... I guess I just couldn't take this anymore. You have no idea how important that day was supposed to be for me. It'd be the last day... the perfect time for me." He paused. I don't think I'm breathing, just giving every ounce of attention I have to make sure I can hear his voice, waiting for him to continue, and then, he does. "Since I could never live with that fear... the way I felt... that nightmare that just came to me again and again... I had to destroy our world."
"Why?" I ask, my voice so small that it actually startles me. I didn't know I could sound like this.
"It's all about us... our world is. It's an important place for only the two of us where you and I belong... but, it won't last forever. I was just ready to speed up the process in one leap." If that was supposed to be a pun, then I'm angry, now. "Splitting up slowly is liking being ripped apart from the inside. And... with how I feel... I just can't bear it."
"What made you think we'd ever split apart?" I whisper. I don't know how I managed to have the self control to not scream at him again. God, I wish some people would fucking think before they speak. He doesn't even realize how he sounds, is my guess. We both have to be the most selfish creatures on the planet. I'm exaggerating. I don't care. This is fine.
"Our world is growing, and more people are being brought in. As they're brought in, a wedge gets driven between us, secrets start being kept, lies start being told, and..."
"I don't think any of that is happening." It isn't happening, right? If it were, why wouldn't he just tell me? Literally, the only one here keeping secrets is Kaoru. I'm pretty sure i know myself well enough to know I'm not keeping anything to myself. I don't have that much going on outside of the little world we built. That, and school, but that's just an irritating nuisance. We're rich. Why do we even need school anyway?
"Everyday... you and me... my dreams... what used to be nightmares, turned..." he stopped, not finishing his sentence, turning away from me to avoid having his full expression seen. I give him a look that goes ignored, trying to worm the rest of the words out of him without asking for what I wanted. He mouthed something. He may have said that last word, but I didn't hear it no matter how hard I strained and tried to focus my full attention on him.
"I can't hear you..." then, I could've sworn I heard him say the word "fantasies". He didn't say another word to me, that day.
This isn't fine.
-----
I can't sleep. I can't stay in his room, though. He needs different care than I can give right now, and the bed isn't big enough for two of us. Well, it's big enough for us, but I tend to kick him off the bed accidentally. With how his body currently is, it's a bad idea for us to sleep together. I get out of bed to go peek in his room, and find that he's awake, too. He looks so sad. He looks like he wants to cry. Is this the sadness that I had never seen? Why is he like this? What did I do that made him suicidal? I should have been the one to jump... to end his pain, if that's how he feels. I'd do it for him. He whispers my name.
"Hikaru..." he closes his eyes, a tear sliding down his left cheek. I gasp and try to hide, thinking that I'd been seen, when in reality, he had just said my name while I happened to be there. He gasped a little bit, looking in the direction of the door. "Hikaru?" yeah, he spotted me. I peer back in, sigh, and open the door. I walk in rubbing the back of my head awkwardly, trying to pretend that I hadn't been there for as long as I'd been. I avoid looking at him, knowing he can see right through me.
"I can't sleep with you, and I can't sleep..." I feel like a baby the way I said that. I'm pathetic. "Can I stay with you for awhile?"
"You could get a mattress from another room and we could at least sleep in the same room together." He suggested. I go and get mine. It'll feel weird to sleep so low to the ground, but I just want to be near to him. I bring my sheets and covers in and make my bed, hugging my extra pillow, pretending it's Kaoru.
"I'm jealous." He said.
"Why?"
"You can hug something. I can't hug anything..." he sounds so lonely. It makes me want to pull him into my arms and keep him there. We go silent for awhile, and then I come up with a genius idea. I get up and walk over to him with the pillow I had been holding, and remove the pillow from under his head, surprising him. "Hey, what the-"
"I'm giving you mine, and taking yours. We can pretend we're closer since we were just touching these pillows." I put my pillow under his head. His cheeks turn pink with blush and he looks away from me, smiling a little bit.
"Thank you."
"No, thank you." I say, hugging my new pillow. "This one might get me to sleep better." I lay back down, holding the warm pillow close to me. After a long silence, as I feel myself falling asleep, I hear him whisper,
"I love you..." I whisper back,
"I love you, too." I feel myself nodding off, comforted by the familiar scent on the pillow, and the proximity of my brother. I can pretend he isn't so far away with this pillow in my arms. I can be delusional for awhile. It's fine. I nearly slip into the realm of dreams, when he speaks again.
"Don't say that to me." He says. I open my eyes, and meet his with my own. "I don't mean it how you think." He looks away from me. I kept watching him for thirty minutes. He fell asleep before I did.
-----
I made an issue out of our parents wanting me in school until they left me alone about it. We can bribe people if we have to to fix our grades and lie about our attendance. The staff at the school are supposed to suck up to us anyway. It's all a bunch of networking opportunities. It would cause issues if they labelled the Hitachiin family as delinquents just because their sons didn't come to school and didn't turn their homework in. Nobody wants to cause that kind of trouble for themselves. It doesn't matter.
I've probably hit a new record high on just how selfish I can be, and lately, while trying to figure out what the hell I did that could have caused this situation, I guess I've been having to do some introspection. I've been trying to break our interactions down to the atoms that build them, overanalyzing to the point of sickness. I must have had the most absolutely ass take on something at some point, but I'm still pretty sure that that doesn't cause someone to jump off a building. Then again, jumping off a building isn't for sane people, and if I'm not doing mentally well (I'm not. I've been looking into it. I'm really not), and Kaoru's a mirror for me to look into and do some examining of the self, then that would explain why he jumped off. He's not well. That's obvious to see, and someone would probably look at me like I was the dumbest guy on earth if they could hear my thoughts. I've been spinning my wheels trying to solve this problem for a long time now, and every day I have no new answers just makes me panic more. The days feel so long and boring, yet so short and wasted.
It's been a week since he came home, and he's still keeping many things from me. My sanity is being chipped away at, and I haven't admitted my brain is doing this yet. Things have a tendency to eat at me more than I thought. We normally solve issues between us within a day. Two at max. I'm not used to having a serious problem for this long, and I've slowly started realizing how screwed I might be. I don't know anything about the world outside of what we've built, and if I'd lost him, I wouldn't have lasted a week after his passing.
Now isn't the best time to talk about expanding our world. That's one of the issues I know now's the worst time to bring up. I need to find a better time when we're both doing mentally better than this. I know Kaoru has issues with the idea, but having money isn't very helpful if your head isn't screwed on straight.
"Hikaru, you don't have to stay in this room with me all day. You can go out with our friends." He said.
"Kaoru, I'm not leaving you."
"I can't exactly get up and jump out that window, if that's what you're worried about." Excuse me? What the fuck? If that's his idea of a joke... genuinely, if i didn't love him to death, I would slap him.
"Kaoru!" I hate hearing him talk like that. I'm trying so hard to keep my own thoughts at bay. The idea of him jumping out the window makes me feel like we need to barricade it. Make it so hard for him to manage it, he couldn't without power tools. I know he could probably crawl over there and get out if he were desperate, and I know that if we were to board up the windows that it would look bad to any on-lookers. Not to mention it would be an endless, constant reminder that we are worried he'll do it. That wouldn't do well for his psyche, nor mine. "Don't say things like that! You said that dreams were bothering you, so I thought sleeping in the same room as me would banish the nightmares..." it banishes my own, as well. I rarely have a scary dream when I'm holding my little brother at night. Something about someone's soft breathing and their heartbeat is the most relaxing thing.
"We haven't told the others what really happened to me." He said, trying to change the subject. I allow the subject change for a moment.
"I told them you got sick. I don't want to tell them you broke three really important bones in your body."
"You don't want the brighter ones in the group to get what really happened, is the truth." He's a mind-reader. Kyoya and Haruhi would know, somehow. They're like the Host Club's gods, or something. Kyoya might keep it in his mind, but Haruhi speaks hers. "I'll be in bed for months. They'll think I have the worst illness in the world if you don't explain that I jumped."
"I'm going to say that you fell if I have to go there. Kaoru... I hate this. I miss how things used to be. Suddenly, it feels like you don't care enough to even try and make me understand what your problems are, anymore." I said it before I could filter. I said the silent part out loud.
"It's all I can ever think about. You're dense. Really dense... so you'd never get it unless I told you. I thought you'd understand what I meant that day." he has to be the most annoying person in the world, but at least he's not mad at me over what I said. Either that, or I literally can't read the room at all, and I'm the whole problem.
"Meant that day? The 'perfect time' was what you referred to your death date as. What did I miss?"
"There are obvious hints all around you. It gets more and more obvious by the day... the hour... maybe even the minute..."
"Just... tell me..." I'm exasperated. It's probably something tiny that could be fixed in five minutes, and he's making me guess? Things like this make me wonder how we managed to get friends. Who would put up with this? Only people that love you a lot.
He goes quiet. He didn't say anything else for the rest of the day until tomorrow.
-----
He's asleep when I go to check on him the next day. He looks so peaceful on this Saturday morning. I sit on the bed right beside him, and stroke his hair. He smiles in his sleep. I smile, as well. It's so nice to see that look on his face after such a long time. He moves closer to my hand, cuddling against it adorably. I chuckle a little bit. He can be so cute, sometimes. His face is dusted with soft pink blush. He doesn't seem to be having a nightmare right now, so, maybe I'll stay until he wakes up. In his sleep, he whispers my name.
"Hikaru..." I wonder if he knows I'm sitting right beside him just from instinct alone. He probably sensed I was here. He sighs happily. "So much..." he blushes a little bit more. So much what? Is he having an awkward dream about me? I glance down lower, and the sheets don't change at all, so he isn't pitching a tent. I probably just have a dirty mind.
"Kaoru..." I whisper. It sounds right when I say it. His name just slips off the tongue so easily for me. He's my favorite person. I gently caress his cheek with my fingers. He cuddles closer to me, reaching over with his left arm--the only unbroken arm--to give me a hug as he slept.
"Love you..." he said. I smile more, and go back to petting his hair. He nuzzles my side for a little while, holding me close as I stroke his hair until his eyes slowly open and he stops the motion. I watch him and realize that he woke up.
"Good morning, Kaoru." I say with a big smile. He gasps and moves away from me quickly (as quickly as was possible with the level of injuries he has), blushing fiercely. I check for anything awkward, and see nothing. He didn't have a perverted dream, so why is he so worried about it? Either way, I need to get my mind out of the gutter 'cause it's weird.
"M-morning, Hikaru..." he stutters, avoiding my gaze.
"What's wrong? You seemed to be sleeping well since I was here."
"How... long were you in the room?"
"For awhile. You're doing that thing where you talk in your sleep. You looked so happy, too. What was it about?" he blushes harder.
"There's nothing to tell..."
"Why not?" I lay down next to him since there's enough room to, now, being careful to not jostle him as I climbed up. I hug him softly, my head on his left shoulder. "I miss sleeping in the same bed as you. Sleeping in the same room is better than nothing, though. You're so warm, though, and I always fall asleep quickly."
"What all did I say?" he asked hesitantly in a whisper.
"Something about me, so much, and 'love you'." He looked sad when I said that. "Is something wrong?"
"You don't understand my nightmares."
"That didn't seem like a nightmare. You seemed happy even before I sat beside you and hugged you while you slept. The nightmares I remember you having often involved tears, holding me tight, and occasionally waking up screaming..." often, if one of us had a nightmare, the other did, too. We would always be there to console each other, and that is why we still sleep together.
"It's not that kind of nightmare."
"Nightmares have genres? What exactly was that, then?"
"I... guess it goes in the 'Forbidden' genre..." I cock my head to the side. I watch him, waiting for him to say more. When he doesn't say more, I cuddle up close to him and say, "Love you, too."
"Hikaru, don't say that..."
"Why not?"
"It's... not helping me at all..."
"Why not? I love you. It's only natural that I say it."
"You don't understand what I mean by that!" he shouts. I flinch. I didn't expect him to yell at me. I frown.
"What's to understand? Love is love. That's all love is, right?"
"You don't understand..." he whispered, clearly irritated that I don't get it. I wish he'd choose one pitch and stay with it for awhile. Straining to hear and then getting my ear shot off isn't fun.
'I wonder...' I thought. It's an experiment, and it's dumb, but why not? What do I have to lose? I kiss his cheek. He gasps.
"H-Hikaru!" he says, so surprised. I lay my head back on his shoulder, and say,
"You know? You say to me that I'm the dense twin, but you're the one that doesn't get it. It slipped off the tongue so easily the other night when you said that you loved me, and I gave it some thought. Saying that I love you is an easy thing to do. It doesn't bother me, because love is love. And I guess you could call this a confession. It was one for you too that day you jumped, wasn't it?" he looks so shocked. I don't think he's breathing.
Yeah, I know. It's not great. We're brothers. Identical twins. More than 99% of the world can't tell us apart. All we have had in our world is each other, and nothing else. Maybe it's not the most mentally-well idea, or the best decision at all, but I've been thinking non-stop about it for days upon days, losing sleep trying to solve it and find the patterns. I did some research online, asked some anonymous questions... one might say that me taking this route, out of all routes one could possibly choose ever, is a very 'the lights are on up there, but nobody's home' type decision. I may not be the most okay person in the world, I know this. It just feels like the right choice right now. I'm the kind of person who usually thinks before speaking, and this was pre-meditated. I don't think anyone would find out, and that was basically the only thing that made me cling to the idea of just trying and seeing how it goes. This is love, isn't it? We don't know anything other than this.
If this doesn't work out, and it turns out he is the only one that wants this and I'm wrong, what will happen to us?
I wait for him to speak.
"It... I... I'm so wrong and filthy... I had to do it. I... my feelings... I told them to you knowing that I would die afterwards. I stole your first kiss and everything! I... gave you mine, though... and jumped..."
"That's extremely irrational." So am I, but I'll work through things eventually.
"You don't understand, though! The pain that I've had feeling this way... knowing how bad and sick it was... but... I fell for you more and more every day. I saw that the others would interfere, and that in the Host Club during our act, while I felt so happy in your arms so close to you, I knew we'd never kiss, and it hurt me so much. I wanted to end that pain. I wanted to be rebuffed, or something... anything to help me end these feelings so I can be right in society... but... the thought of being accepted... I just wanted to be so lucky... it's... I just..." tears formed at the corners of his eyes. He whimpered. I take a finger and wipe the accumulating tears away before he started to cry.
"I'm not rebuffing you, am I?" he choked up and threw himself at me (it would have been a two-armed embrace if it weren't for the fact that his right arm was broken), crying hard. I hug him back, stroking his hair. "It's fine, now. There's no reason for you to feel any pain from your feelings. It hurt because it was one-sided. I think you just failed to notice my feelings, though. I could lose everyone else in the world and survive as long as I have you. You're the only one I have eyes for." He sobs on my chest, the sounds he made getting softer. I hope he's calming down, but he's probably going to cry harder because he never expected acceptance. I pull him up so that his tear-wet face was close to mine and I connected our lips. We stayed this way for five seconds before we split apart. I used my thumb to wipe away new tears so that his face could dry off slowly. I whisper his name, and he whispers mine back to me. The way he says it makes me happy. The wounds on his heart are healing.
"Hikaru..." he slowly smiles, this time crying more because he was happy. "I've always wanted to know what it felt like to break the tension." Tears streaked his cheeks as he lay his head on my chest, and I held him tight.
I would have done this sooner if he had told me before. My only hope now is that this was the right decision. I should probably do something about how impulsive I am, but the doors to the outside world are basically locked now. The only ones in the world are the two of us.
Come what may, I'll see this through.